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THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 11, 2017
you always have to be alert because at the
court you don't know who could kill you
because you're wearing trousers."
Aisha's former teammate Amaal began
playing with the encouragement of a
friend, a lively, well-liked girl named Faiza.
One day, before a game, al-Shabaab mil-
itants arrived at Faiza's house.They took
her to an empty lot and tortured her, cut-
ting her body and face with shards of
glass, shaved her head, and then left her
to die. "It made me really scared for my
life," Amaal recalled. "You put your life
in danger in this country because of the
thing that you love."
When Amaal joined Mohamed's
group, she was apprehensive, but she
went to the gym to work out every morn-
ing, and then met up with the others in
the afternoon. "It made me stronger,"
Amaal said. "I used to be at the house
doing nothing---I never had any friends.
Basketball lets me know more about my-
self. I'm around women who are passion-
ate, who are my friends." She hid that
she played, even from relatives and friends,
because she didn't know whom she could
trust. She was still piecing her life back
together: her family had lost its house
during the fighting and moved into a
refugee camp. But Amaal was deter-
mined. "To have a dream and wear pants
and a shirt and hold a basketball---there's
nothing stronger to me," she said. "To
think about what I want for myself and
to do it."
Once Aisha had learned the funda-
mentals from Mohamed, she flitted
among teams in the club league. She
played with single girls, married women,
mothers, students. They were mostly in
their teens and early twenties, and they
talked and joked like sisters. Aisha's team-
mates were energetic and scrappy, a mix
of experienced players and novices. In a
game I saw, one short girl kept stealing
the ball to take shot after shot, missing
nearly all of them, with a wide grin on
her face. When a player on the other
team made a three-pointer, she went over
to congratulate her. Aisha, by contrast,
had a pugilistic intensity; she was con-
stantly moving and scheming. She was
a center, the most physical position on
the court.
On a team called Heegan, Aisha made
friends with two outgoing, adventurous
girls named Salma and Bushra. One eve-
ning, after practice, the three of them
hailed a tuk-tuk, one of the yellow rick-
shaw taxis that crash through Mogadi-
shu's streets, and told the driver their des-
tination. On the way, the driver took a
wrong turn and then stopped. Aisha leaned
forward and asked him where he was
going. He told her that something was
wrong with the vehicle, and that he was
calling for help. Another man approached,
holding a gun. "You girls are infidels," the
man told them. "You're playing sports and
walking on the street wearing pants." He
aimed the gun at Salma, and she jumped
up and lunged for the weapon. But he
fired and the bullet grazed Bushra's leg.
The girls managed to call over a police-
man. After they breathlessly told him
what had happened, he took the men
to jail.
Later, the police had a press confer-
ence announcing the arrest of the man
with the gun; he had admitted to plan-
ning several bombings in the city. Aisha
watched the announcement on televi-
sion. "He is still in prison today," she said
with satisfaction. But there were others,
all over the city, who shared his views.
Mogadishu is a hard place to go un-
noticed; there are always eyes
watching you as you make your way
through the city. In sidewalk cafés, men
gather to talk and argue at all hours,
drinking tea, smoking hookah, and chew-
ing khat. Women linger nearby, selling
food from stalls. They all keep watch on
the street, observing passersby and the
events of the day. They can be friendly,
willing to o er help if a car bomb goes
o . Or they can be hostile. People in
Mogadishu speak of spies---neighbors,
colleagues, friends, family---who report
to al-Shabaab.
Women have learned where in the
city to cover themselves with burqas, and
where to pretend that they don't play
sports, in order to leave with their lives.
The girls in the league played in pants
and shirts, but many wore niqabs to and
from the court, shielding their faces to
show piety and to keep from being rec-
ognized. Aisha refused to wear one. "I
don't care," she said. "I just show my face."
When I met Aisha, she was playing
for a club team called O.F.C. Late one
afternoon, at her sister's house, she was
getting ready for practice. In her bed-
room, Aisha looked like the embodiment
of a feminine Somali woman, wearing a
long floral skirt, a pale blouse, and a dark
floral-print head scarf. She then walked
across the room to rummage through a
red suitcase. She stripped o the skirt,
the blouse, and the head scarf, and re-
placed them with a red cotton tank top
and a sky-blue jersey with the number
ten on the back. (She was already wear-
ing matching track pants under her skirt,
as she usually did.) She retied the head
scarf, knotting it like a bun, instead of
letting it drape around her shoulders in
the traditional way. Next, she pulled on
a floor-length skirt and a mustard-yel-
low jilbab, which covered her head but
left her face exposed. She was ready to
make her way to the court to play ball.
We drove through a labyrinthine mar-
ket in Hamar Weyne, a quarter of nar-
row streets lined with ancient crenellated
walls. People filled the market, talking,
haggling at stalls, pulling battered carts
loaded with animals and cargo for sale.
We arrived at a facility with an outdoor
court, enclosed by peeling pink cement
walls. Aisha's teammates were scattered
through the place, shooting hoops, run-
ning on treadmills, and lounging on
benches, gossiping. Aisha pulled o her
skirt and jilbab and roamed the grounds.
Although the girls weren't much safer
here than anywhere else in Mogadishu,
they were loud and carefree: this court
was home.
One of the girls, Khadro, was visiting
from New York, staying with her grand-
mother for the summer. She played bas-
ketball at home, and an uncle in Mog-
adishu had suggested that she join a local
team while she was in town. She was
amazed, she told me, at the girls who
played despite all the strictures.
Her uncle, a boisterous man with a
round belly, had come to watch the prac-
tice, and he started talking to Aisha.
"Heegan is no joke," he said, referring to
her old team, a rival of O.F.C. "They ac-
tually own this court."
"O.F.C. is getting better,"Aisha coun-
tered. "It is better."
He o ered a compliment---"I like
your shirt"---and then went back to
needling her. "Heegan is taking every-
thing. It's the best in soccer, handball, all
the sports."
"The Heegan soccer team is not that
great," Aisha yelled. "They're in fourth
place!" Her voice rose to a shriek. "O.F.C.
is the No. team! This ground belongs